Informal Essay

Alivia Shattuck

ENG 133

March 30, 2019

Dr. Drown

 

 

For centuries, the idea of race has been an ongoing important topic. After reading many different articles, I have found an understanding of what race means to other people. In Hochschild’s article I Spent 5 Years With Some of Trump’s Biggest Fans, she emphasizes the idea of a “deep story”. She describes a “deep story” as “The deep story reflects pain; you’ve done everything right and you’re still slipping back.” (Hochschild, Page 24) As she talks about what a “deep story” interviews many different people. These people she has spent five years with and has a view of how they live with a different perspective. One of her interviewees stated “You are patiently standing in the middle of a long line stretching toward the horizon, where the American Dream awaits. But as you wait, you see people cutting in line ahead of you. Many of these line-cutters are black—beneficiaries of affirmative action or welfare. Some are career-driven women pushing into jobs they never had before. Then you see immigrants, Mexicans, Somalis, the Syrian refugees yet to come. As you wait in this unmoving line, you’re being asked to feel sorry for them all. You have a good heart. But who is deciding who you should feel compassion for? Then you see President Barack Hussein Obama waving the line-cutters forward. He’s on their side. In fact, isn’t he a line-cutter too? How did this fatherless black guy pay for Harvard? As you wait your turn, Obama is using the money in your pocket to help the line-cutters. He and his liberal backers have removed the shame from taking. The government has become an instrument for redistributing your money to the undeserving. It’s not your government anymore; it’s theirs.” (Hochschild, Page 14) People are coming to the United States from all over the world and as they entered this country, they are getting treated how they shouldn’t be. As we know from Kenji Yoshino’sCovering, covering is “to tone down a disfavored identity to fit into the mainstream.” (Covering, Preface) Hochschild’s interviewees use covering as a way to hide their “deep story”. People who enter the U.S also use this as a way to hide how they came here as a way to hide who they really are. Yoshino also talks about the idea of True Self and False Self. True Self is “the self that gives an individual the feeling of being real.” (Covering, Paragraph 13). The false self is “the self that gives an individual the feeling of being unreal.” (Covering, Paragraph 13). Those with a “deep story” try to hide their true self and false self in order to avoid racial judgments. Steve Olsen’s The End of Race: Hawaii and the Mixing of People and Covering see eye to eye on this idea. Olsen explains how moving does not solve the problem of racism. No matter where you go, you are going to be faced with racism.

 

The real way to get the answer on how somebody feels when they are faced with racial challenges is to ask them directly. A website called Witness Project, asked white millennials from Dallas, Texas ideas on race. Many of them had experience with racial judgments and others have viewed it. Lena age 21, described her experience as “I would tell my dad not to come to my basketball games. don’t come to my volleyball games because he looked very middle eastern and so when people saw him, and they found out I got called tritiated and people were very rude to me.” and Liam age 18 describes his experiences as “If you ever watch an NFL game and you look at a white receiver vs. a black receiver you know the white receiver is a lot of time will be described as he’s such a smart receiver he knows how to run his routes very well. A lot of the times when they describe black receivers, they say this guy is a real athlete. This guy can make any sort of catch.”  Each person has their own story of how they have experienced racism, but you can never know how it feels until you experience it yourself.